Posted by
Rob on Friday, February 22, 2008 4:14:41 PM
So what conclusion do I draw from these frequent posts on the Trinity? Is there any point to studying 1500 year old debates? Is there anything new under the sun?
Yes. And I will go back and work on that
Qoheleth blog too. But first let's list a few things we learn from Trinity beginning with an anecdote.
Years ago, a bright young physicist named Murray was trying to understand why the world of subatomic particles was getting more complicated, rather than simpler. When you and I were in grade school, we were taught that there are 103 elements or distinct atoms but composed of only 3 particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. Simple building blocks making a complex periodic table of the elements. Yet as the government funded bigger and bigger particle accelerators to study these sub-atomic particles, things got more complex instead of less. It seems that there were all sorts of particles that looked vaguely like protons and neutrons, but had strange charges and random weights. When the muon, an obese form of the electron was discovered, I. I. Rabi, a Nobel laureate, was said to have quipped, "
Who ordered that?" Simple things made out of even more complex stuff?
In the midst of this confusion Murray latched upon an equilateral triangle composed of 1+2+3+4 particles stacked in rows, drawing his inspiration from eastern religion, calling it the
Eightfold Way. This theory explained all the known particles, and predicted a new one, which when found, insured Murray the Nobel Prize. (The
wikipedia entry tells us that the symmetry is that of SU(3), which is mathspeak for "special unitary group of three dimensions". The complex number system is SU(2), and the world we drive around in is SO(3), for "special orthogonal group of three dimensions". )
But the point I am making is that mathematics has just as important role in physics as it does in theology. The Trinity is more than a concept beyond all conceiving, it is a mathematical reality. And while I sympathize with Lossky's attempt to avoid math and put the Trinity on an a-rational plane, it remains distinctly, rationally, individually, mathematically three. Since three is not beyond our intuition, then there is something we can still understand about the divine hypostases, showing that we never quite take leave of our minds, even in heaven.
Of course, if you are a mathematician, heaven needs no justification for you already know that math is the language of heaven.
Vern Poythress, who has doctorates in both math and theology, being therefore one of the few people qualified to talk on this subject, has a whole book on the theme,
as well as shorter papers available
here. And he makes the
valid point that the Trinity is essential for mathematics (the inverse of my claim).
So what do we make of these threes that we have discussed?
Father, Son, & Holy Ghost
body, soul, & spirit
meaning, print, & communication
God, man, & word
Notice there are 12 items listed above, though we might arrange them in subgroups of 9. For example,
| God |
Man |
Word |
| Father |
Soul |
Meaning |
| Son |
Body |
Print |
Holy Spirit
|
Spirit |
Communication |
or doing a pivot around one of the columns,
| Meaning |
Print
|
Communication
|
| God |
Man
|
Word
|
| Father |
Son
|
Holy Spirit
|
| Soul |
Body
|
Spirit
|
and, as they say in mathematics, for the sake of completeness, here are the other two arrangements, but they are all identical excepting the ordering of the rows.
| Father |
Son
|
Holy Spirit
|
| soul |
body
|
spirit
|
| meaning |
print
|
communication
|
| God |
Man
|
Word
|
and
| Soul |
Body
|
Spirit
|
Father
|
Son
|
Holy Spirit
|
meaning
|
print
|
communication
|
| God |
Man
|
Word
|
Organizing this into mathematical form is beyond my limited group theory education, so I defer to you, gentle reader, to tell me whether it satisfies the conditions for a group or not.
And now for the fun of it all,
here is a fellow who thinks he has found the mathematical group that describes every particle known to man. (Move over Murray!) It is contained in a big mathematical group called E8. Here's his picture of it, what do you notice that it is composed of?
Group E8